Great, you've made it this far! Time for some serious SatObs stuff then. The quickest
way to see what will be visible at your location is to head over to Heavens Above. For no fee whatsoever,
Chris Peat's Heavens Above will calculate which satellites will be worth watching out
for on any given evening or morning for your location.
To make things easier, the Tropical Stargazers website has a link to
Heavens Above,
on the menu at the
left, to the Heavens Above page that shows which satellites will be visible, where and when, in the
Mackay and Whitsunday region. All of the links which you follow from this page will be equally as relevant,
except for the links to Iridium satellites, which are a special case - more details about Iridium satellites
later.
HA (Heavens Above) will give you a result for your search something like this:
| Satellite |
Starts |
Max. Altitude |
Ends |
| Name |
Mag |
Time |
Alt. |
Az. |
Time |
Alt. |
Az. |
Time |
Alt. |
Az. |
| ISS |
1.9 |
18:39:33 |
10 |
S |
18:42:34 |
46 |
SE |
18:45:56 |
10 |
E |
Taking a look at the table, to us experienced astro physicists, the satellite field tells
us which satellite we may able to see, and the magnitude field tells us how bright it is
likely to be. The next three sections tell us at what time the satellite will appear,
be at maximum apparent altitude, and will disappear.
A good start is to figure out where north is. Don't worry about true north, grid north
and magnetic north - If you're going to see it with your eyes or a pair of binocluars,
a few degrees won't make any difference.
So, in our example, the selected satellite will appear at altidude (Alt.) 10 degrees
above the horizon at 18:39:33 in a southerly direction(Az.). Three minutes and one second
later at 18:42:34 the satellite wil be at it's maximum apparent altitude, 46 degrees,
in a south-easterly direction. In another two minutes and twenty two seconds the satellite
will be just disappearing in the east, again at an altitude of 10 dgrees above the horizon.
So what can you see? The brightest regular artificial things in the night sky (excepting
that bloomin' street light accross the road), are Irirdium satellites, the
International
Space Station, and members of the space shuttle fleet. The
Hubble Space Telescope is a regular
visitor to the night sky, as are hundreds of other satellites, ranging from weather satellites
to classified millitary imaging satellites.
We mentioned earlier that Iridium satellites are a bit different. How so? Read on...